“I once heard students in Snoring saying that the tales by the Brothers Grimm weren’t actually meant for children in the beginning,” Loki said.
“That’s right,” Axel said. “When they first collected the tales, they didn’t have children in mind. But later, when they noticed that elders liked to recite them as bedtime stories, they toned them down and made them suitable for children. Still, mentioning blood in the beginning of the Snow White story, strikes me as weird. It’s so strange that the story starts with a mother seeing blood on the snow and fantasizing about having a baby with red lips—“
“Red as blood,” Fable interrupted as if she felt the need to defend Snow White, “hair black as the window-frame, skin white as snow.”
“Yeah, thanks,” Axel said. “See?” he turned back to Loki. “I can’t think of a single mother in this world who would relate seeing blood to wanting to have a girl with lips as red as blood. What kind of wish is that? Besides, two of these descriptions perfectly fit the attributes of a vampire: lips red as blood and skin white as snow. All vampires have pale skin and their lips are covered with the blood of their victims they have bitten,” Axel dropped the book and picked another one to show it to them. “And look at this pretty picture,” Axel mused, pointing at the picture of a man with white fangs, wearing a black and red cloak.
“Dracula?” Loki furrowed his brows.
“Count Dracula himself,” Axel pointed a forefinger in the air. “A man whose name has always been synonymous with the same three colors Snow White’s mother wished her daughter’s looks to replicate. He wears a black cloak that is red from the inside, and his skin is always as pale as snow. Red, Black, and White.”
“That’s absurd,” Loki said.
“Look who’s talking,” Axel remarked. “You’re a vampire hunter, aren’t you? Half of the people in the world don’t believe in vampires.”
“Yes, but I never said fairy tale characters were vampires,” Loki shrugged his shoulder.
“Fairy tale characters aren’t supposed to be real,” Fable said.
“Yeah, and when I asked my history teacher about vampires, she told me they weren’t real either,” Axel shot Loki a cruel eye. “And I’m sure I saw one yesterday.”
Loki shrugged. If Charmwill were here, he would have argued otherwise.
“Look,” Loki started. “I understand that the earlier versions of fairy tales were full of gore, blood, and twisted morals; nothing new here. The fact that there are common color motifs between Dracula and Snow White doesn’t prove anything, so where is this going?”
“Alright, let’s skip the color part,” Axel said. “Here is something else you should consider. In the end of Snow White’s story, the dwarves preserve her in a coffin—“
“A glass coffin,” Fable corrected him. “Because she was so beautiful, and they couldn’t imagine not looking at her when she died.”
Axel ignored her and turned to Loki.
“I see what you’re getting at,” Loki said. ”Vampires sleep in coffins, so it’s reasonable to question why the authors wrote that Snow White ended up sleeping in a coffin. I get it. Still, this sounds coincidental to me. It’s not solid evidence.”
“Don’t you get it?” Axel said. “She was kept in a coffin until the prince came and woke her up after the dwarves thought she was dead, which means that when he kissed her she became undead,” he stopped for the effect and looked at Loki and Fable. “The same thing that happens to the vampires you kill. They’re not dead but they’re not alive either after you stake them. You put them in a coffin, but if someone else pulls the stake out, they wake up again. It’s almost the same scenario, only told in riddles for those who can read between the lines. To me, this means that the kiss in the fairy tale equals pulling the stake from a vampire’s heart. And I’m not even questioning why Prince Charming was there in the first place, or how he knew about her whereabouts, or why he kissed a dead girl. Yuck.”
“So what? The prince kissed her awake from a long sleep that was induced by her being poisoned with an apple,” Fable said, acting as if she were Snow White’s lawyer.
“Aha,” Axel seemed to have an Einstein moment, his eyes shone with victory. “You only say this because it’s what you’ve been told in school. The truth is that the magic kiss never happened. It’s not even true,” Axel explained.
“What do you mean it’s not true,” Fable said. “Everyone knows that Prince Charming kissed Snow White awake.”
“Total nonsense,” Axel said proudly. “In the original Brothers Grimm text written in 1812 and then republished in 1857, the prince never kissed her. It’s a Walt Disney fabrication.”
“He didn’t?” Loki wondered.